WHO CAN help US?

A friend asked me recently if I had any thoughts to contribute about what it means for a single person to be fruitful and multiply. It was nicely timed because I'd just written a post on adoption as sons based on the idea that singleness brings with it a barrenness no one wants to acknowledge, so all of that Genesis stuff was fresh on my mind. But then I went to a wedding. And watched a movie about adoption. And RSVPed to a few more weddings. And listened to some friends talk about their new relationships. And held a newborn baby. And suddenly anything I thought I had to say or think about singleness or fruitfulness went the way of hoop skirts and handlebar mustaches, that is to say, extinct.

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I have this other friend. We don't get to see each other often, she lives on the other side of the 70 mile metroplex we call home. But usually all it takes is a glance at one another at church or a text or a simple thought and we're on the same page. She's a talented, beautiful girl, with a talented, godly husband. They live in a beautiful home they've made into a haven. People might envy their idyllic lives, and in some ways, I wouldn't blame those people, this couple has what many people only dream of.

But they don't have a baby.

And that's what they dream of.

She and I, we're the sort of friends who enter into one another's pain, and though it is not the same, it is the same: we both want what we do not have and there is no guarantee for either of us that we will ever get it.

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The longer I am single, the more women come into my life who struggle with infertility, a staggering number of painfully quiet pray-ers.

So I began to listen. I began to listen to their stories, to their mourning, to their agony, to the ways in which they felt inferior or on the exterior or incapable. I began to listen to their tears and their fears. And here is what I am learning:

We are all barren souls, empty wombs, and carved out holes. We, all of us, long for something not yet here and it might be as beautiful as marriage or a baby or it might be a simplistic as a big screen tv or better career. We want. We ache. We ache. Deeply in us for something to satisfy the gnawing inside of us.

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Another friend of mine left our church recently, choosing another church to call home for a season. Why? I asked him. To find a wife, he said. I stared at him—if you're a good man and you can't find a wife at my church, you're not looking to your left or right. But then I realized something: there's a gnawing in him. An ache. A barrenness. A desperateness.

"It is not good for man to be alone.

I will make a helper fit for him."

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I sit in need these days. I wonder how I could ever be a helper fit for anyone and then I remember Christ's words in John: I'm sending my Spirit to you! He will help you, guide you into all truth.

He has made a helper fit for us, all of us.

So friends, I just want you to know that I understand and you understand and more than anything He understands and we, all of us, are called to help. I help my babyless friends by reminding them of God's faithfulness. They help me by reminding me that marriage and a home doesn't equal completion. Women, we help our brothers by being approachable, willing to take risks. Men, you help us by not overlooking what could be the best spouse fit for you.

But more than anything the Holy Spirit helps us all by guiding, teaching, comforting, and filling us full, to overflowing.

You may feel alone, but you are not alone.

Soul

I'm all alone in a corner tea house in the middle of downtown Chicago. There are people walking through life in their rainboots and oxfords outside. It is afternoon and I am cold. The man across from me is wearing mint green pants and a group of Koreans just came in chattering, one tripping up the stairs in her Hello Kitty galoshes. I catch the eye of a man walking outside, I wonder who he is talking to on his smart phone. He dips his head against the drizzle and keeps walking. This weekend's conference is for Creatives. That's what we're called these days. These days in which we make adjectives into nouns and capitalize them with an air of ego, a dash of narcissim, and a whole heap of are-we-good-enoughs thrown in for good measure. We are a room full of introverts, stumbling through life in our too big for us boots and our too small for us dreams. At the end of today I realized that it was not a conference for Creatives or Artists or even Storytellers. It was a conference for souls.

I catch another eye outside the window of the tea shop, she has her nose buried in a pink scarf and her blond hair is falling messy around her pink cheeks.

We are not as alone as we feel.

Maybe the problem is that we just don't look at one another in the eye? Who was it who said that eyes are the windows to the soul? Cliched? Perhaps. But cliche becomes because there is truth hidden in lines like these.

Why don't we look one another in the eye? What are we afraid of? A human? A being? A person with a life and a story, one who is attempting to make something beautiful out of the cards dealt them? A soul?

So this has been two days full of ministry to the soul, the untapped region. Untapped because we are afraid of it enough in others that we begin to fear it in ourselves as well.

I know what my soul is capable of and I don't even know a fraction of what my soul is capable of.

It is capable, most of all, of worshipping itself, putting its eyes on the temporal, the carnal, the seasonal bounty. But today I have that inkling of hope again that He shows me the way to life, real life, is the fullness of worshipping Him alone.

That feels insurmountable, I'm telling you the truth. I got on a plane yesterday morning, put my head against the seat, and asked God, please, to refresh me, to fill my soul and the hurting parts, the lonely parts, the soulish parts of me that are wrapped up in this temporal kingdom. I have taken my eyes off the Creator, put them on the creation, and that creation isn't even worthy of a second glance if He is not my first.

If it is true what He says—that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and I believe it is true, then it must be true too that the only way to the Father is through Him.

I don't forget that, no, but I overlook it. I look over it and put my eyes on beautiful places, but they're not ultimate places or the fullest of places, they're just good enough places.

I catch the eye of a little girl who just came in with her mother, she looks away, taught so young that we take our eyes away from the beautiful thing that is the soul. I wonder if it is our mutual turning away that teaches us it is okay to look away from depth. If that is when we learn to take our eyes off the faith that is childlike and full, certain that He can do what He says He can do and He is Who He says He is.

And if that is true, how can we unlearn it on this side of heaven?

I hold the glance of a man in a flannel shirt walking past the window. I will myself to not look away and he, surprisingly, doesn't look away either. I turn up the side of my mouth and he nods his head at me and passes from my view.

Did God REALLY say?

One friend and then four more told me this week they hope for me what I hope for myself, and that is to be picked, chosen, and loved. More than one friend and a few more have said the word deserve and when they do the blackest parts of me come to my mind's eye and I disbelieve everything they say from then on. A lie may be small (Did God really say?) but its infractions are limitless.

Today I am driving home from class, the sunrise to my back and a row of 100 cars stopping and going, stopping and going in front of me. I am thinking of Job's friends. Their comfort to his plight was how any of us would respond—with good wishes and you deserves and reminders of good deeds checked off: So why is God not near then? Did He really say?

We speak statements veiled in questions, buffered by doubting inflections so our collective unbelief sounds less wrought with sin than it is.

To ask if God really said what He did indeed say is virtually the same as if to say He did not really say.

In class this morning we read a passage from Genesis that a man read over me a decade ago. He put his hand on my head and promised that if I would do as this man of old did, I would taste of the same richness of relationship in life he did. I set my feet there and I have not moved.

If you were to make a list of my good deeds you could check them off, each one. If you were to cup a portion of the love I have given, you could fill a lot of hearts. I say that because I have so many convinced that I deserve God to come through, make good on what was seemingly promised.

And yet He does not.

And He might not. Not in the way I think He should.

We read about how Abraham died before he saw what was promised and I wanted to shake my fist at God for one moment. How could you promise him and then not deliver!? How could you hold that promise far off like a carrot in front of the face of a working mule? All this, for this? For nothing?

It is no secret that I am doubting Thomas. I know Thomas more than I know any other disciple. I need to thrust my hands into my Lord's side, my fingers into his hollowed out hands. I need Him to walk through walls and I'm not ashamed of that.

Faith needs people who will ask and not stop asking.

But today I am seeing my doubt for what it is. My asks should not be statements punctuated with question marks.

They should bring me further into the light, not the darkness.

Further into His character, not my own.

Further into joy, not sorrow.

Further into what He did say, and not what I think He might have said.

what shines brightest

I haven't always been a peacemaker. I used to be a peacekeeper. I hoarded peace like a child with his Christmas stocking full of Andes Mints and Pez candy dispensers. I kept peace to myself, sure that if I could pet it, and feed it, and care for it, it would stick around. I kept it like a kept girl, made it work for me, paid its wages at the altar of hiding in groups and keeping relationships at arms length. I kept peace by repeating after myself that I was not at fault for the grenades flying over my head or the words flung across wooden tables or down long hallways.

Romans 12:18 says to live peaceably with all and, well, I have tried to do that. No one can accuse me of bringing wrecking balls into life's infrastructures in the past decade. No sir.

Tonight I think about the rest of that verse, though, or rather, the beginning of it: If possible. So long as it depends on you. Then live peaceably with all.

If possible. Meaning: when all other outlets have been explored, when I have sorted through the cans and wills and dos and don'ts of possibility. When I have exhausted improbability and taken no thought for the bullets colliding through my unchinkable armor. When I have braced myself for the fall that will inevitably come when I am most certainly misunderstood and when I am blacklisted from here til kingdom come. When it is possible, do it.

Stop writing the rebuttal. Don't blog the discourse. Don't preach to the choir or to the vagrant in the back row on whom you have your [plank-filled] eye.

Why? Because it's possible. It's possible for you to shut up, pursue peace.

So long as it depends on you. Meaning, and don't miss this: the world will spin madly on.

Eliza Doolittle sung a bit of theology for us all when she sang to Prof Higgins, "And without much ado we can all muddle through without you." So as long as we hold the beautiful ability to pursue peace with all men, we ought to. So long as it depends on us, we should trust that our meddling in affairs that bring an end to peace, well, people die on hills like that and we wade through the carnage for centuries.

Tonight I sat in a room with some beautiful people and we shared some broken things, some carnage, places where we didn't pursue peace or where someone didn't pursue peace and we were the wreckage left behind.

But here is the beautiful part of that: wreckage will be left while we wander this earth, but what's ultimately left, when the All Consuming Fire has come and burned away everything but what shines brightest, what shines brightest will be the Prince of Peace and we add nothing to that beauty with our earthly bickering.

WHO is GOD?

The roads are pockmarked and uneven, my step is steady and forward. The sun is rising over the horizon in front of me and this past weekend's sermon sounds in my ears. The Holiness of God.

I have struggled for many years to understand the character of God. A misunderstanding of it ultimately led to a crossroads where I had to ask the question: am I saved at all? And I don't think that's too extreme. Some would say that He is a mystery, and I would agree, but for me to know Him at all the veil had to be torn in two, and He did that for me. He did that for me.

This morning I am reading Psalm 145 which is like flash fiction or the cliff notes for the story of God. His character there, splayed out on a quarter of a spread in my bible, mercy, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, enduring, gracious, greatness, righteousness, glorious. If ever I find myself waning on the character of God again (And I do. And often.), I can turn here and get inoculated for yet another slew of tiring, confusing, humble, failure-ridden days.

I don't have to be, because He is.

He already is, so I don't have to be.

And some, myself included, might argue that until they are flush in the face and full of can-do-itiveness. And some, myself included, will undeniably fall again, fall short of holiness, miss the mark, falter in faith, and try their best to make a mockery of God.

I ate dinner with a friend last night and as we stood by my car we talked about how God cannot be mocked. Paul said it to the Galatians and as much as I want to defend my faith against the cajolers and mockers of it, the truth is that left to my own devices, I make the greatest mockery of His name of anyone I know.

"It's why the cross." I think this morning, over Psalm 145 and my coffee. It's why the cross, I have to remind myself when I feel tired, confused, and ridden with failure. It's why holiness, perfect character, hung on a cross—so the veil could tear in two, so I could enter into His holiness with my wretchedness.

Are you struggling to believe His goodness today? I am. I'll tell you, I am. But here's something, friend, He knew that. At the end of Psalm 145, after David exholes the grandeur of God, he comforts the little people with this: The Lord is near to all those who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.

All I know some days is that He is all that I know to be truth and that's good enough for me. He is good. He is my good.

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SILENT FIGHT

It is hard to win the battle when you don't feel like fighting.

Depression is no stranger to me, even if he has been the crazy uncle who was ousted from the family a few years back. He was kicked to the curb in 2010—I stood in my doorway and told him to never come back.

But he's been peeping in my windows and knocking on my doors recently. The other day I saw him in the swirls of paint on my bedroom ceiling. I lay there quietly, willing him away, asking him kindly, ignoring him, and finally looking him full in the face and telling him in no uncertain terms he was unwelcome.

He moved to the bathroom, staring back at me from the mirror, in the sad eyes, the straight mouth.

"Where is my joy?" I asked him. He shrugged. He is indifferent, this Uncle Depression.

I've been listening to a sermon from 2006 a friend posted. I've listened three times. It's my own pastor and he's not saying much different than he says in 2012, except a short rant on how ipods are here to stay (seriously?). He's talking about how sometimes we just have to move our feet in the direction of water and trust that wilderness can be where we find hope. 

There's something different about this visit with Depression—different than his previous occupancy in my heart. Before he felt like he was there to stay, unbidden, but there to stay. This time he's just teasing me but he's also leaving room for me to still see the water. This time I know where the water is and I want it, I'm thirsty for it, and I know where to find it.

I just don't feel like it.

It's hard to win the battle when you don't feel like fighting and I guess that's where I am today. Everywhere I look, Uncle Depression is lining up his battalion, setting up a formation of fighters who will accost my soul and threaten my joy. And I feel alone. I know I'm not alone. But I feel alone. And no amount of people on my side will change that, I know. I've been down this path before.

What's different is formerly I'd fill my army up with doing, doing, doing. And this time I feel I just need to be still, trust. He will fight for me. I know it. I don't feel it. But I know it.

"The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent."

Exodus 14.14

JOY and the ABACUS

Praise God for the abacus.

When He was dolling out brains and gifts, knitting me together in quiet, He crafted me into a right brain, made me a host of creativity. Math left me crying with my head in my hands through school and college. If it was not for a professor who shut the door of a classroom containing me, him, and two blackboards filled with chemistry equations, promising me we would not leave until I could solve every one of them, I would have never passed CHE101. A faithful friend tutored me for six hours before an algebra final, which I aced, and promptly forgot everything I'd just learned.

So praise God for the abacus.

This ancient tool made for counting was—in the creative bastion of art and literature of my childhood home—used for more than simply adding and subtracting. For hours my hands would spread and separate those colored beads, creating patterns and chaos. I knew it was intended for mathematics, but to me it seemed more a thing of art and beauty.

The concepts of math have always felt far from me. I am always sure that I could manage my way through them if necessary, but I have been clever about my vocational choices and I never double recipes. When I take account of what I need to count, I focus instead on beads of joy, colors and patterns of life in front of me and count them thus.

So when yet another friend brings her heart to the threshold of my inbox, when I sit across from a friend at lunch, when I get a desperate text message from another one, when the trials of our faith are near and close and oh, so painful, you will not find me saying to count it all joy.

Because counting is painful.

And, for me, counting is a process. A long, slow process.

It cannot be rushed or formulated into additions, subtractions, and divisions.

Counting all things joy means taking each bead of sweat, each beautifully painful moment, and each complicated pattern, and it means counting it, touching it, feeling it, and knowing it is part of a whole abacus. But sometimes counting is slow going and that's okay.

Praise God for the abacus, praise Him for tangible numbers and complicated patterns. But praise Him more that His math isn't always our math and sometimes what feels like our subtraction is His multiplication.

who WANTS my CREDIT CARD?

It is a thing to be trusted.

This morning I took my boss's American Express card and drove a quarter mile to the post office. A left turn and a right turn and I was there. A package needed to be overnighted and I was free to do it, so I did, with a credit card tucked in the front pocket of my jeans.

This is a small thing, a normal thing for most employees in small non-profits like mine. If you cannot trust the fifteen people with whom you labor alongside in work like this, who can you trust?

But this is also a big thing: how easy would it have been to keep on driving straight into the Texas flatland, spending every cent possible on that card?

I'd never do it of course. But I could have.

This is what I am thinking this morning because last night I looked into the eyes of a weeping friend and said words about how true God's character is that He would entrust some of us with His broken children. His absolute goodness assures me that when He hands me the life of someone to love, hold, and listen to,  He purposes that moment for me. He entrusts it to me.

Me?

There are so many broken things behind me that I think that I cannot be trusted with anything; surely the cycle of brokenness prevents me from ever handling anything with grace or faith, let alone success.

But time and time and time again He hands me his credit card and it has an unlimited amount tied to it, and He says "Drive on, daughter. Come home when you're done, but drive on, be faithful. I entrust it to you because I know Who I Am and I've got this."